Defining Success

Being successful

I realized tonight that I am successful.  

By many of the worlds standards I am not.  I don't have a high paying job. I am not wealthy, I don't have a title.  I am not a public figure. I am not hugely influential...

I manage a small business, I drive a 10 yr old car, and live in a small house, so how, you might ask, am I successful??

I have a great marriage, next month I will celabrate 20 years of being married to a great guy who I am still very much in love with.  And we still like each other!

I have 3 great kids who are well on their ways to becoming productive, responsible and happy adults.

I have great freinds who I can depend on, who laugh with me and support me.

I have a comfortable home, more than enough to eat and my bills are mostly paid.

I am fairly healthy

Best of all, even though I may be somewhat underemployed, I am never bored.  My job isn't challenging, but it leaves me the mental space to use my brain to help other organizations as a volunteer.  My job is also flexible enough that  I have the time to work for free for groups such as the Red Cross.  I get to help people who are in need and I get to help my community.

All of these things bring me so much joy.  I am so blessed! 

This is my version of success.

23 years and I still can't get enough of this guy!

I wrote this story as. Facebook note a few years ago, but since tomorrow is the 23rd anniversary of the night I met my true love I thought I'd share it again. Enjoy!

     20 years ago today I met the love of my life. To be honest we had been introduced through a mutual friend at high school but he had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend at the time and that was that. So on June 1st 1990, I went out with my girlfriends. They were trying to cheer me up after my recent break up with my boyfriend of 2 months (an eternity in high school). A group of us girls went out in Polly Broome's parents station wagon (shaggin wagon). Polly was the sober driver and the rest of us, well we were not. 

     I was oh so cool with my gigantic hair, my rolled up french baggy jeans, my dads blazer and my pointy toed shoes, you remember, the ones with the little metal caps on the tips? Back then the cool thing to do in Summerside was what we called the BK 500. Basically you drove around Burger King parking lot, saw who was there and then drove up to MacDonalds parking lot, saw who was there and drove back again.. etc. in between times you stopped, socialized and drank.
     I was drinking Rockaberry wine coolers, and being hit on by some goofy guy who I wasn't interested in. He kept buggin me to give him one of my coolers which I wouldn't do because those things were hard to get when you were underage. Finally I told him to leave me alone, he called me a bitch and I kicked him in the balls.
     Now if you are thinking this guys was Trent you are wrong! Trent comes into the story now. You see after I kicked this guy he fell to the ground yelling and cursing and so of course a crowd gathered. this guy was rolling on the ground calling me everything but a white woman and his friends were rather annoyed with me as well. I was looking a little nervous when my knight in a denim jacket stepped up and put his arm around me and said " hey, that is not a very nice thing to say to this nice girl!" to which the other guy said, " that whore kicked me in the balls!" Trent then said to me, " you didn't do that did you?" to which I replied, " it was an accident" so Trent says, " see, she said it was an accident," and then to me he said, " come on lets get away from these losers". so the conversation progressed from there.
He asked if I went to Westisle, and said he remembered seeing me around. He asked if I had a boy friend and was pleased to hear that we had broken up. He suggested that we sit in the back seat of my friends car because I was cold and then..... 
     My drunk friend Amy came and hopped in the back seat with us! Trent was in the middle and Amy and I were on either side. She was crying her eyes out over some guy who had spurned her affection so of course Trent starts paying attention to her! then Polly comes and begs me to come and help her. It seems that another of our crew was passed out on the floor of the Burger King bathroom and they were threatening to call the cops if we didn't' get her out. Damn! I figured if I left this hunky boy alone with Amy she would get her claws into him before I came back. So I hauled him out of the car and put my forehead against his and said " will you wait here for me while I go help my friend?" he said "sure" and I gave him a big kiss. He grinned and later told me he was thinking to himself "Boy! you are getting on tonight!" he didn't but he hung around. 
After the rescue he and I went for a walk to Tim Hortons and talked all the way. Coming back I was eating a Boston cream doughnut and when a big blob of cream squeezed out on my finger I plopped it on his nose. He stopped in mid stride and looked at me like I was deranged. " What ever possessed you to do that?" he asked to which I just laughed my head off. In the end he asked for my phone number, and wrote it on his cigarette pack. We tongue wrestled a bit more... and well the rest as they say is history. 

      I know I love him more today than I ever have. We have grown up together, had lots of hard times, but more good times. We have loved large and dreamed big. He is my best friend, and I hope he always will be. So tonight if you see a couple of people making out in the Burger King Parking lot, please don't call the cops, our kids will be very embarrassed if they have to come and bail us out of jail.

The following is a speech I gave at a province wide rally against planned changes to our rural hospital services:

Thank you to my fellow committee members for organizing this event today.  A few months ago I got together with a group of other concerned west prince citizens to try and find a solution to our ER closurers at western hospital.  Because all of us came from different political backgrounds we agreed to be  nonpartisan however, we knew that we would have to be political.  Health care in our province is run by the government but despite our best efforts those in charge of our health care would not meet with us privately, so we are here today to publicly tell those in charge of our healthcare enough is enough!  Our current system is broken and governments plan for better access, better care is like giving a Tylenol for a brain tumour, it might lessen the pain a bit for a brief time. But it doesn't solve the real problem.

In a statement made in January the health minister said health care was advancing.  The definition of the word advance is move forward or progress.  Thousands of islanders with out family doctors is not progress.  A hospital that 15 years ago could deliver babies but now has a sign on the door that says in case of a medical emergency call 911 is not progress.  Goings from two 24/7 doctor staffed ER's to one staffed with to a nurse and a paramedic at night is not progress.  Depending on private fee for service companies as critical parts of our healthcare system is not progress. Shuffling our seniors out of their home communities and away from their families and supporters is not progress.

Another catch phrase that the health minister has recently been using is, " our health care is evolving". To evolve means to gradually change to a more  highly developed form.  I would argue that in fact our health care is  De-volving. Tommy Douglas fought for a Medicare system in which everyone was treated equally regardless of their ability to pay, regardless of where they lived.  We had that once, but not any more.  We are devolving back into a two tiered system of healthcare, one for the rich and one for the poor.

Over these last few weeks of public meetings we have heard lots of blaming of our health care woes on escalating costs, of not enough money to go around.  However, Canada’s leading health care economist, Robert Evans, has said that the wolf at the door of the Canadian medicare system is not an economic wolf but rather “a political wolf dressed in phony economic clothing to deceive the sheep.”  Well guess what, we arent sheep! And we refuse to put our heads down and say, "baa, baa".  We are here today because we believe it is time for a fundamental change in the system of healthcare delivery in PEI! And the governments plan for better access, better care isn't it!

Over the last 9 months various groups from across PEI have been working independently, investigating the intricacies of our health care system.  Recently these groups came together to form the Islandwide Healthcare Access group. It is astounding that dedicated volunteers have a better knowledge of our healthcare system than the people who are employed to run it.  Together we have discovered inexcusable levels of bureaucracy,  and mazes of finger pointing.  It is the seniors fault, they are aging faster than we expected, it is the doctors fault they don't want to work over time, they don't like rural areas, it is the federal governments fault, they don't give use enough healthcare transfers. But never once have I heard any healthcare leader stand up and say, "we've made mistakes, we didn't plan well".  

We have come to the conclusion that health care for islanders is too important to be left up to government officials who are only concerned with they're own 4 year term.  Healthcare is too important to be run with out consultation from front line healthcare proffesioanls..We need a non partisan elected health board which has equal representation from all counties.  Equal representation from both urban and rural area.  This health board  should be made up of health care professionals like nurses, doctors, paramedics and community members ...And it MUST operate independently from government!  No more should our health care be a toy for politicians to play with, robbing one community to gain votes in another, pitting town against town! Making promises to win an election and then breaking them as soon as they are in office.  Health care needs to be delivered based upon best practice and quality care for all islanders! 

We the people demand the government scrap  its better access, better care plan because clearly it will provide worse access and worse  care. We demand fundamental change in how healthcare is run on PEI, not just window dressing!  Stand up for the people you serve Mr Premier and revolutionize healthcare on PEI for the better. Listen to the people who elected you.  Listen to the people who provide healthcare on the front lines.  Bring in an independent health board! Let that be your legacy.

He is not dead, he is just away

Today has been a sad day in my community.  A family lost a little boy very suddenly, from natural causes so there is no one to blame or get angry at, just sad sad empty grief.

It is amazing how such a thing, the death of a little boy who I didn't even know can affect me so.  Many parents I'm sure are thinking the same thing, "I can only imagine, it is my worst nightmare.." and it is, truly and as a parent I know it, but I know that no one who hasn't experienced that grief first hand can understand, not even me.

My brother died suddenly at age 12. I was 14.  It was an event that is etched in my memory so crisply that I can recall it down to the details of who sat where, and what they were wearing.  As a child that grief was agonizing, but for my parents it was a million times worse.  I'm sure they cried  when they heard about this boy.  They do everytime someone loses a child, because they know... It is a wound that never heals, you just learn to live with it.

Thinking back today I remembered a poem that came in one of the hundreds of sympathy cards my family got.  This poem by James Whitcomb Riley rang so true to me, and gave me courage to go on. I cut it out when I first read it and for many years it was taped up beside my bed so I could read it at night.

I cannot say and I will not say

That he is dead, he is just away

With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,

he has wandered into an unknown land

and left us dreaming how very fair

it needs must be, since he lingers there.

And you-- oh, you, who the wildest yearn

for an old-time step, and the glad return,

think of him faring on, as dear

in the love of there as the love of here.

Think of him still as the same. I say,

he is not dead-- he is just away.

I just wanted to share it for everyone out there who has lost a loved one.  Maybe it will help you through the dark days like it has helped me.

Making Changes

So I had a boring day on Saturday. There was no one around, and nothing on tv so I decided to watch a documentary on Netflix.   Netflix  gave me a recomendation for a movie "No Impact Man". It was a documentary about a man living in New York who had a crisis of conscious of sorts about how his lifestyle impacted the world.  He was an author and tried to pitch his preachy ideas for a book, but his editor said,  basically why don't you try living what you are preaching first and then we'll talk ,  so he went on a radical lifestyle change designed to have no impact on the world and live sustainably for one year.  Now some of his ideas were pretty over the top, like living in a New York apartment with no electricity and not using toilet paper, but some of his ideas made a whole lot of sense, like not buying anything new if he could get it used, and not using disposable products.  Another was that he decided to eat locally grown organic products only.  He also obviously gave up tv! 

Now I know what you are thinking, oh here goes Michelle again  on a new fad ..she'll be insufferable for a while and then she'll give it up and in a few years we can all laugh at how crazy she was.. I hope that won't be the case but anyway here's what I think.  I don't agree with everything the no impact man had to say ( his name is Colin Beavan by the way) but after reading his book, ( yes they did publish him after all) there were some things that rang really true to me! 

1. Tv makes us unhappy.

One of Beavans quotes that I like is " how much of our consumption makes us happier and how much of it just makes us wage slaves"  The average person spends 4 hours a day watching tv, that is 4 hours being told that they shouldn't be happy with what they have. That they need to buy this that or the other thing in order to make you happy.  And then we wonder why so many people are on anti depressants and in debt!   I honestly never ever considered giving up tv before in my life and I figured that being aware of negative messages in advertising was enough, but after reading what he had to say and really paying attention to what I was watching for a few days I realized he was right.  

Another issue with tv is that is creates chaos with our sleep habits. Our natural rhythm is to unwind at right, but instead we watch tv for hours and any sleep doctor will tell you that tv before bed is the worst thing you can do if you have trouble sleeping, which I do!  

Another reason why I never considered giving up tv was because I figured I couldn't get the rest of the family to do it to and I have tv at work soo.. Why bother.  I tend to be an all or nothing person, but another thing Beavan said was that you can't always change those around you, but you can change yourself!  so I decided to take a break from tv.  If it isn't on, I won't put it on.  I will listen to the radio, or nothing! I will still watch movies and Netflix.. No commercials there!  So last night I just didn't turn it on and you know what ?neither did anyone else! Trent and I chatted all evening, Sam went to bed early, and we both surfed the web and it was peaceful.... But I wanted to watch tv so bad!!!!!! But I just kept saying, wait another half hour.. And it wasn't too bad.  I did watch part of a movie on Netflix, but it got dumb so I turned it off, today I'm at work and no one is asking for the tv, so I just left the radio on instead... More than 24 hours tv free, not sure how I feel about it yet.

end note.. Noticing just as many ads on the radio... Sigh!

2.  We are too wasteful.

Being an Islander and having  one of the best legislated garbage disposal systems in North America I admit has made me complacent  and a bit sanctimonious! We  recycle tons including our plastic bags, so why bother with cloth.  We compost a lot, so that's good, but.... I admit, I have a lot more waste than compost.  For instance, how many times have I have something yucky in the fridge that I can't be bothered cleaning out the bottle, so I just trash the whole thing.  One thing that got me was I thought well, I can't drink the water at work, so I am stuck drinking bottled, but then it occurred to me, I have nice metal water bottles in my cupboard that have rarely ever been used, I could just take water to work form home....So I am trying to be more conscious,  turning off lights when I leave to room, washing out the icky bottles, buying things with less packaging... I'm trying, that's all I can say

3. Processed food

Now Colin Beavan originally started eating organic unpackaged food, but later went with a local organic vegetarian diet.  I'm not interested in going that far! As far as the local goes, yes! I believe in eating local as much as possible for the pure fact that I believe in supporting local business, but trade is how our nation was discovered, it was how our culture evolved and spread and has been going on since before recorded history, so if it doesn't grow here and I can get it imported from a sustainable, and fair traded source, I'm all for it.. ( you heard me, I'm not giving up my DAVIDsTEA for any thing).  

As far as organic I'd like to work towards more  organics, I think we have far to many chemicals in our environment as it is, but I also know, as Beavan discoverd, organic isn't always the best way.  As far as vegetarian goes, I can understand his issues  with the sustainability of beef, and his dislike for large factory produced meat.  After the recent ecoli issues we had here in Canada  I can under stand some of his concerns, and honestly I recently had one of those little grocery store chickens, it was more like a cornish hen, and it tasted like mush! Farm chickens are so much better!  

I have been dairy free for about 3 years now due to a severe allergy.  At first it was hard but it really isn't that hard anymore. And the more I find out what is in milk etc, I am glad I am.  One thing that the dairy allergy opened my eyes too was what is in our food! I was never a label reader before I got sick.  When I had to start reading them and I discoverd what is in our food I was shocked that, a. I wasn't sicker, and b. that more people aren't sick.  People talk about how much cancer there is in our society, how much celiac, crohns and bowel disease! Read the ingredients in your food and you won't be surprised Anymore!., ( sorry, I'm  ranting). 

So anyway, I have been In reasonably good place lately as far as my health issues go, but my weight is not where I would like it to be and I would really like to see my over all health improved.. I am turning 40 next year and I figure if I want to live the next 40 years healthier than the last 40 now is the time to make a change.  So my change is that I am going to try and get away from processed food.  If I can make it myself, I will.  At first I thought, "oh, I can't, it's too much work, I have to go all over the place to get all this organic food, I won't have the time, I don't want to waste all the stuff I already have, etc".. And then I put the breaks on.. 

First thing I realized, I have a bread maker... It has never been used, it was passed from my mom to my sister, to me, so I tried it out last night, and it was soo simple! No mess, just put in the ingredients, set the timer and 4 hours later fresh bread! And I figured out that I can add the ingredients 3 minutes a before I leave for work, set the timer and have fresh bread at supper when I get home... And I can get whole wheat, stone ground local flour at my local co-op!!! 

Now I also tried last night making homemade mayonnaise...( I am a mayo addict). That didn't turn out so good, I'll have to experiment a bit more with different recipes.    

As far as meat goes, my parents kept chickens and pigs when I was growing up and I have no problem with eating things that have faces as long as they are humanely raised.  I also have no problem with fish as long again as it is sustainably harvested.  I guess growing up surrounded by faarming, fishing and forestry had givin me a different perspective than a city dweller on what is good and what is harmful.  I have no problem killing animals if the taste good, and aren't wasted, and I don't have a problem with wiping myself with a dead tree either...

So I guess I am trying to go whole food, waste less, live in the now, be satisfied with what I have, and have a healthier body and mind... We'll see how long it lasts! After all I just realized that I forgot my refillable water bottle at home :(... One step at a time!